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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
“Punch-marked coins are the earliest Indian archæo-logical ‘document’ that exists,” wrote Mr. E. H. C. Walsh in 1923 in a thorough study of these interesting remains of Indian proto-historic times. At the time when he wrote his article, very little, if anything, was known of the freshly discovered prehistoric civilization in the Indus Valley, at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. Even in a more recent publication, in Professor Chakrabortty's numismatic handbook,2 no attempt is made to explain the symbols punched upon these primitive coins, and it still holds good what Mr. Walsh said in 1923: “Until our present sources of information are added to, the significance of the marks on punch-marked coins must remain the subject of speculation and surmise.” The late Mr. W. Theobald's study is an excellent collection of materials, but his explanations might fitly be called “archaic”. Mr. D. R. Bhandarkar has given some very ingenious interpretations of a number of these rūpas. But these interpretations concern only a very few of the large number of symbols.
page 307 note 1 “Indian Punch-marked Coins (a Public Coinage issued by Authority),” in Centenary Supplement, JRAS., 1924, pp. 175–189Google Scholar.
page 307 note 2 A Study of Ancient Indian Numismatics, etc., Calcutta, 1931Google Scholar.
page 307 note 3 “Notes on some of the symbols found on the punch-marked coins of Hindustan,” etc., in JASB., lix, pt. i, Nos. iii–iv, 1890Google Scholar.
page 307 note 4 A. B. Arch. Survey, 1913–14, pp. 210–13.
page 308 note 1 It will be seen that in our drawings we have not tried to render all details of the Indus seals. We believe that this method offers a fair means of comparison. The size of these punches is far too small to allow any details and their drawing must necessarily be of a summary character.
page 311 note 1 I am quoting from Mohenjo-daro, vol. iii; the Sign Manual No. is given in all my illustrations. Sometimes I give the pictogram as shown on a seal, not as copied in the Manual.
page 317 note 1 Op. laud., p. 43.
page 317 note 2 Sir Richard Burn kindly draws my attention to the fact that some of the symbols in the present article persist even on Muhammadan coins down to the eighteenth century. This is another good proof in favour of my thesis that symbols have a very long life. If these symbols have been in use in historical times since about 600 b.c. up to a.d. 1800, then there is no reason to doubt that they could have lived two thousand years earlier already.